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20 Za 22 23 24 25 Case 1:15-cv-07433-LAP Document 1332-10 Filed 01/08/24 Page 26 of 64 25 H2G8GIUC So that's the second republication point, your Honor. Let me move quickly to the pre-litigation privilege. This was argument three in our summary judgment papers, Judge. We know under New York law that if you're in litigation, a lawyer makes a statement that's absolutely privileged. The question in the Front v. Khalil case is what happens if a lawyer makes a statement before litigation has begun? And in that case, litigation did not begin until six months after the allegedly defamatory statements by the lawyer. So what the New York Court of Appeals says in 2015 is that, because of the possibility of abuse by lawyers -- I can't imagine that -- what we are going to do instead is we are not going to give you an absolute privilege, we will give you a qualified privilege. But it defines a qualified privilege rather carefully, Judge. It says that the qualified privilege that you have is that any statement that a lawyer makes in good faith anticipated litigation, that's pertinent to good faith anticipated litigation, is privileged. Now, you can look at this as being absolutely privileged or qualifiedly privileged. It's absolutely privileged, in my view, so long as the lawyer can establish that there was a good faith anticipated litigation. Once you have established that point, then it is an absolute privilege. Or you can talk about it in a qualified sense, which is that the lawyer has a privilege to make defamatory statements, but SOUTHERN DISTRICT REPORTERS, P.C. (212) 805-0300